The folks behind Natural Selection Surf have done a commendable job keeping things under wraps for the last month, but a 10-day scorefest through remote South Africa can only stay a secret for so long. And the word on the street is the crew got into everything from pumping slabs to spitting beachbreaks. Premiering on September 25, we’ll have to wait a couple more weeks to see what they’ve cooked up, but they have shared who was on the judging panel, and what criteria there were using to determine their eventual winners.
Led by head judge Nathan Fletcher, South African competitive stalwart Greg Emslie, and giant Killer Sean Holmes, who famously took out both Kelly Slater and Andy Irons at J-Bay in 2010, round out the panel.
“It was a privilege to sit on a panel where we simply had the opportunity to observe and appreciate artists at play, expressing themselves freely in perfect surf,” Holmes said in a press release. “In the end, the standout surfer was simply revealed naturally.”
And that leads us to the judging criteria. Not your typical surf contest, according to the event organizers, “the format is intentionally built to let the standout surfer emerge over time, rather than being determined by a single moment.” Surfers are judged using the CREDO criteria: Creativity, Risk, Execution, Difficulty, and Overall.
rather than tallying individual wave scores, Fletcher and crew were tasked with ranking each surfer from first through fourth based on their overall performance in the heat, using the CREDO criteria: Creativity, Risk, Execution, Difficulty and Overall.
“The judging is pretty simple and straightforward. It’s judged like a surfer who is watching a session,” says Fletcher. “The guy who surfs the best overall wins, but there’s also the fact that if somebody catches a wave that is outstandingly better, and surfs it at the highest level, he can win with one wave. It’s all taken into consideration with the video playback to get the right placement.”
Individual wave scores have been forsaken. Instead, judges rank surfer one through four depending on their performance in a given heat. First place earns 12 points, second 7, third 3, and fourth 1. Those points carry forward from session to session, creating a cumulative leaderboard.
After four sessions, the top four men advance to a final, where their final-session points are added to their existing totals. The remaining four men compete for fifth through eighth. In the women’s division, the fifth and final session is the last opportunity to add points to the leaderboard, with the surfer holding the highest cumulative total taking the win.
Natural Selection Surf South Africa premieres Friday, September 25 at 4:00 pm PST on Red Bull TV and YouTube. It will be available on demand following the premiere.
Related: 12 Surfers, 10 Days, South Africa: Natural Selection Surf’s 2026 Lineup Is Here